1 Samuel 8
Israel Asks for a King
1 When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel.2 The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba.
3 But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
4 So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah.
5 They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead [a] us, such as all the other nations have."
6 But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD.
7 And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you.
9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."
10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king.
11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.
12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.
13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.
15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.
16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle [b] and donkeys he will take for his own use.
17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.
18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."
19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us.
20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
21 When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD.22 The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."
Israel wanted a king, and they got one - King Saul, and anyone who's a Bible reader knows how well that turned out for them. Our country wanted Obama, and we got him. All I can say is, be careful what you wish for, and not all change is good. I hope I'm proven wrong in my concerns, that Obama turns out to be one of the best presidents we've ever had. But in my heart of hearts, I fear that that won't be the case. Only time will tell.
5 comments:
Sounds like you've been reading way too many crazy email forwards.
Perhaps I have. I hope I'm wrong.
But then again, perhaps I haven't. And I could really take offense that you see me drawing a comparison, based on my faith, between an Old Testament passage and today's situations. Just because I am a Christian doesn't mean I subscribe to the same theories as people who send those crazy e-mail forwards you describe. (I don't, by the way. I delete them because I have sense enough, most days, to see they're way off.) I feel how I feel, and if time and events prove me wrong, I'll be right back here admitting that. But I'm not going to call anyone crazy who supports Obama, or whose beliefs differ from mine.
And you know what else? Comments like that are exactly why a lot of conservatives haven't felt free to discuss their feelings or express their opinions in this race. If we don't fall in line, we must be crazy, or narrow-minded, or stupid. I do resent that implication. I'm far less crazy than a lot of people out there, on either end of the political spectrum, and I don't think the fact that I don't agree with Obama's stand on a good number of things should bring my sanity into question. I don't think anything I've posted has been derogatory toward Obama supporters, or if it has, it wasn't intentional. It's a free country, we can all believe what we choose. But we will never get past the huge divide that currently exists if disagreeing on issues means one side or the other must be mentally flawed.
I've read your blog for a while, so I realize you're not crazy. And if you don't like Obama, that's certainly your right and doesn't make you crazy. And perhaps your opinion of him is based on careful consideration of his policy positions, I don't really know. The only reason I made the comment about the crazy emails is that I only have a couple of things in your posts to go on as far as your opinion of Obama, and neither seems particularly well thought out. For one, you seem to have bought into the socialism label, which is completely ridiculous, and based entirely on a single remark, and easily refuted by anyone who takes the three seconds it takes to look up the word socialism. And in this post, you seem to have some vague sense of foreboding, which again doesn't seem to be based on much other than a feeling, which again, I realize there might be more behind it for you, but that certainly doesn't come through in your posts.
As for conservatives not feeling free to discuss their opinions or feelings in this race, I really haven't seen that, but I'm sorry if you feel that way. However, conservatives need to own that to a certain degree, since a very large and vocal segment of them have been busy calling the rest of us terrorists for the last eight years.
Anyway, no offense was intended by my comment, and I certainly didn't mean to make any comment on your religion at all, and I'm sorry if I did offend you. Anyway, I'm quite certain you're wrong about Obama, and I hope that that is made clear over the next four years.
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